Front Burner - How separatists doxxed Alberta

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

On the week where Alberta separatists should have been celebrating a major milestone on their quest to split the country apart, they are instead facing a police investigation and the anger of people across the political spectrum.Separatist group the Centurion Project released the names, addresses and phone numbers of all eligible voters in the province during a political recruitment gambit that could undermine their whole mission. We’re joined by Jason Markusoff who covers Alberta politics for the CBC. He’s going to talk us through what this all means for the future of Alberta's independence movement.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

You know that feeling when you reach the end of a really good true crime series? You want to know more, more about the people involved, where the case is now, and what it's like behind the scenes. I get that. I'm Kathleen Goldhar and on my podcast, Crime Story, I speak with the leading storytellers of true crime to dig deeper into the cases we all just can't stop thinking about. Find crime story wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hey everybody, I'm Jamie Poisson. On the week where Alberta separatist should have been celebrating a major milestone on their quest to split the country apart.

We look forward to your government receiving this clear expression of the democratic will of Albertans and advancing the next steps to include this important question on the referendum ballots on October 19th, 2026. Some of them are instead facing a police investigation and the anger of people across the political spectrum. after posting online the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all eligible voters in the province during a political recruitment gambit that could undermine their whole mission. Jason Marcosoff covers Alberta politics for the CBC. He's going to talk us through what this all means for the future of Alberta's independence movement. Jason, hey. Hey. Good to have you.

Let's start with the news this week that the separatist movement has finally collected enough signatures to me. move to a referendum. They want one in the fall. Stay free. Alberta needed 178,000 signatures for a petition. They say they got over 300,000. A party-like atmosphere. This day is historic in Alberta history. For supporters of Alberta's separatism. We're happy with the number. We're happy with everything. It's just good. I've canvassed and whatnot. And for every person that might tell me something rude, there's 20 people that are thumbs up. What did you make of those numbers? They knew that they needed a big enough number to make sure that if there were some problems with some of the signatures,

because there are all these volunteer canvassers pulling the stuff together who may not have had experience. Some of them may not have signed the right sheet or done it all properly or there were a bunch of duplicates. So you want to make sure you have a high enough buffer that there will be no problem getting 178,000 certified signatures. there. So that's the number. Now, it's a big number. I mean, that is about 10% of the electorate in Alberta maybe a bit less than that. So that's a lot of signatures to get. However, it does remind us that this is not a majority position. Polls show that anywhere between a quarter to maybe a third of the province of port separation and the rest largely is ardently strongly against it. So it reminds us That 300,000 is good, but to win this referendum, they're probably going to need well north of a million people who are in favor of separatism.

Right. Okay. So they finally get these signatures. This should be pretty good news for them. They've been working towards this for a while. But at the same time that this news is rolling out this week, this really absolutely wild data breach story starts unspooling. One, two, three. A rare show of force by elections.

Alberta, flanked by Edmonton police crashing this town hall held by the pro-separatist Centurion Project. There is a concern that your organization is in possession of the list of electors. A group called the Centurion Project, which is this pro-separatist group led by this guy named David Parker, they get their hands on the province's list of voters with the names, addresses, and phone numbers of around 2.9 million Albertans. and then they publish this as a searchable database, right? Why would they want to do that in the first place?

So one of the aims for the Centurion Project is they kind of know that math I was talking about earlier, that they need more than a million votes yes to leave Canada. So what this was was a volunteer operation where this separatist activist group, the Centurian project, recruit separatists to canvas every. everybody they know and see if they support separatism, if there may be to try to basically get this big, big list of people who are separatists or separatists curious and make sure they vote. The back end of this turns out to be electorless. I mean, because you want to have to be, because they want to be able to log, somehow log all these people that they know who are separatists. You know, it's similar to what a party would do, tracking, making sure they have enough voters to win certain ridings. And they've posted online. through videos or YouTube or Zoom calls, some of their seminars on how this whole Centurion project thing works. And when they were talking to the volunteers about that,

they suggested that, no, this isn't a voters list. This is just information you can get from a phone book, some publicly available list that we pulled together. But turns out that it was indeed a voters list. Yeah. And so how did they get it, right? Like, how did they get their hands on that much data and information about Alberts? How did they get the voter list?

This is one of the things that Elections Alberta is looking up or looking into in their investigation. David Parker and this and terrain projects say they did not violate any rules that they got a list through the list that they were using this database through fair means. Someone at Elections Alberta decided to make a big scene by having 10 cop cars drive through Edmonton. and having people show up here. In a statement, the Centurion Project says it was only using the list to find people its volunteers already knew and that it will comply with the Elections Alberta investigation. But one of the ways Elections Alberta was able to find out about this, according to stuff that was said in court for them to get an injunction to have this app pulled down

and to further their investigation was that Elections Alberta, when they give out these voters lists, they seed or salt, the list with some fake names and fake addresses. And if those fake names or fake addresses showed up in this publicly searchable list or searchable via the Centurion Project volunteers, these were telltale signatures that this was an election list. And specifically, because they do specific seating for a specific list they give out, they could trace this list to the Republican Party of Alberta, who was ordered to disclose who all they gave their voter list to.

And just who's the Republican Party of Alberta? So the Republican Party of Alberta is one of many small separatist parties. So, you know, we have the main two parties in Alberta, the United Conservatives and the NDP. The United Conservatives are not officially separatist, although a bunch of their supporters support. Separatism officially they support a United Canada with more powers or more sovereignty for Alberta, as Danielle Smith puts it. But they're a bunch of smaller parties. The Republican Party of Alberta came out of last year's sort of separatist movement. The Alberta Republican Party was founded because we believe Alberta deserves to be in control of its own future.

We believe Albertans should decide not Ottawa, what happens here at home. Cam Davies is the leader of it. He's a longtime backroom operator with a bit of a checkered history in all this. I'm Cameron Davies, a first generation Albertan, son of a teacher and small business owner. I was raised right here in Spruce Grove. I worked in Alberta's oil patch, and I'm a veteran. And that's one of the interesting things about all this, as you consider this. Both Cam Davies leader of the Republican Party and David Parker, head of the Centurion Project, have both been fined significantly by Elections Alberta in the past for misdeeds.

Past, you know, past record doesn't necessarily indicate future, but it's worth noting that they both have a problematic pass with Elections Alberta. So just to be clear here, for people who maybe are just trying to get up to speed on this story, the allegations here are that this voter list with 3 million people was given to the Republican Party, and they got that information legally, and that they allegedly gave it then to the Centurion Project that just posted it online, and now people are absolutely furious that their home address is, like, just out there for, you know, stalkers or foreign actors or, really anybody to look up, correct?

Absolutely. So, you know, some people might be surprised. I think this is a revelation to a lot of Albertans that you think that there's a voter's list, you know, the tax return asks you if you want elections Canada or elections authorities to have your name, you know, include your address or information on a voter list. What people might not know, but reporters of people in the know know is that these lists are given to parties so that parties can conduct, you know, canvassing, figure out who's going to vote for them. but there are a lot of strict guidelines and rules about how you can give it to.

You cannot give it to a third party. You certainly can't sell it to anybody, but there are safeguards around it. And the reason why is one of the reasons that people are really freaking out over this, because a list of all the voters in Alberta includes the list of judges, politicians, prosecutors, doctors, victims of domestic violence. And there we're seeing a lot of concern because victims. of domestic violence, of course, often women, are, you know, want to get away from their, you know, their assailants, their pursuers. And, you know, to have their list on a publicly available document or database that anybody who said they were a volunteer for the Centurion Project wants to do, well, some of them, and we're hearing some of the stories of this, are saying they want to move now to make sure that nobody can find their address.

So this is a big public trust breach, massive privacy breach, you know, perhaps the biggest ever in Alberta. I saw people talking about how it might be the largest or one of the largest in the country. You know, that former Premier Jason Kenney is talking about how his own personal data has been shares. And he has, you know, been consulting lawyers. I understand my personal information, including my home address, was shared publicly on a screen at a recent Alberta separatist event. Kenny wrote Tuesday on social media. Over the past few years, I have received no shortage of threats, so it is disturbing that my personal information is now broadly available.

The RCMP is investigating this now. And just worth maybe us talking about is that Elections Alberta is also in the hot seat here, too, because they were apparently warned of this data breach weeks ago and said that there was no compelling reason to investigate. And just explain that to me. Yeah, this is a lot of people are under scrutiny for this, including the elections authority that's supposed to be investigating this and, you know, the lead safeguard of our democratic processes and privacy on this one. So it was April 30th, but a week ago that this injunction came down, taking this Century and Projects app with all this list offline and demanding that they, you know, that they come clean on how they got that list and the sourcing. but it was back on March 31st that a journalist based in Calgary Jen Gerson from the line had gotten information from her sources about this list, about this Centurion Project Act.

And she, rather than just reported and publicize it, actually went to Elections Alberta, thinking this was such a grave breach of privacy and the integrity of the voters list. April 10th, about a week and a half later, she gets a note from the election commissioner of Elections, Alberta, saying we don't have grounds to investigate the, And part of what happens, what comes out here is that Elections Alberta is saying that the Smith government, the UCP government last year, changed the threshold from which they can investigate. It's now has to be, they have to have reasonable grounds to believe in offense has occurred. It used to be a different standard grounds to warrant. Basically, it's now like you need to have as reasonable grounds to arrest somebody. It didn't used to be that, that higher threshold. The government is having a bit of back and forth with Elections, Alberta publicly about,

that. But it does seem that for whatever reason, it was made tougher for elections Alberta to investigate offenses. And that could well be part of the reason that this wasn't shut down much quicker, that it took at least a month for them to get this down. You know that feeling when you reach the end of a really good true crime series? You want to know more, more about the people involved, where the case is now, and what it's like behind the scenes. I get that. I'm Kathleen Goldhar and on my podcast Crime Story, I speak with the leading storytellers of true crime to dig deeper into the cases we all just can't stop thinking about.

Find crime story wherever you get your podcasts. While we're on the question of who knew what, when, and what they did or didn't do about it, The story got even crazier this week, really, when screen grabs of this online meeting, the Centurion Project held last month, got released. And they show the group in this online meeting showing how they have all this personal info. And in one point, they apparently do show the personal info of former Premier Jason Kenney. And the important part here is that the screen grabs show a member of Danielle Smith's UCP government was in attendance at this meeting. and talk to me about the outrage and criticism that has been unleashed toward the government since those screen grads come out,

because the implication there is is that people high up in her government knew a while ago what the Centuriontorian Project had. Yeah, or at least they could have known. Yes, that's the allegation. There was a caucus aid for the United Conservatives on this list, and this is common among, you know, political. political groups. They all have a caucus staffer or an aide who, you know, attends different public meetings just to see what different groups are up to. The NDP has, you know, their guy who traips the countryside and I see him at all these different events. The UCP apparently do as well. So the allegation is that you guys saw this stuff. You saw somebody flashing Jason Kenney's

private home address on a screen. You should have known that this was. was not at all kosher. Certainly the NDP, once they found out about this, went quickly to the RCMP. They say they went up to the RCMP back on April 17th in the middle of the month, weeks before this thing got shut down. Did the Premier know her staff were at that meeting? No, Mr. Seeker. The person in question is a caucus staff member who does opposition research. The Premier staff member sat through a meeting where her friend David Parker gleefully shared Jason Kenney's information and her staff didn't tell anybody. It's just business as usual for this government. There was no way for him to know that this data was illegal. That was not disclosed on the

You know, it could be, and this is just me speculating, that the aid, you know, might have been looking for something else, didn't really twig to the fact that this would not be the sort of information you get from any basic publicly accessible database that you buy or that you find in the phone book, you know, that that is a possibility. The UCP, Daniel Smith, is the Premier is saying the NDP should have talked to us about that, should have come clean with the government and alerted us to it. But, you know, it's clear that they had a chance to know. They had people on the inside of this meeting who could have told them, but for whatever reason, they didn't twig to this fact. There, it seems like the reality is there a lot of drop balls

potentially and that this could have been shut down. a lot sooner and it was allowed to be up for at least a month. Yeah, for anybody to copy, et cetera, et cetera. I know the staffers are saying that they did think that it was obtained legally. You know, it is a bit ironic, I think, that on the week that these separatists get the signatures, this data breach story blows up. Because people are now questioning whether elections Alberta has lost the trust of the public to run a credible referendum on separatism, right? and just flesh out that argument for me a bit more, that this could undermine a vote on separatism, how?

Well, I think certainly among separatists and a lot of their own activists, there is deep-seated mistrust of institutions to start with. Certainly, they don't, you know, they don't trust public, you know, a lot of people who don't come out of not trusting public health during the COVID, don't trust authorities that have tried to, they're investigating certain separatists in this.

And on the other side, You have a lot of people alleging that this big referendum petition came in. Who's to say that some of these lists weren't just, you know, these names on the petitions weren't just copied off of this questionably produced list? The elections, Alberta, as they reviewed the signatures potentially in coming weeks of this referendum to see if it can be verified, we'll be looking for some of these seated names, these salted names that they put in the Republican Party list. And if some of those names are proven to be fake, then who knows what this is. But there are certainly people out there who think that this whole process is legitimate

and are certainly tarring all separatists with the brush that they've been involved in this massive privacy breach. How are the separatists responding to all of this? I know the movement itself isn't a monolith. Some people out there see that this is a witch hunt. But, you know, the main groups, the Stay Free Alberta, Mitch Silvestra, leader of it. They're trying to distinguish different separatist groups from different separatist groups. And there's a lot of overlap. Mitch Sylvester and David Parker were both together big wigs in Take Back Alberta, this activist group that helped push out Danielle Smith and install a lot of

supporters of theirs and activist within the United Conservative Party board. But, you know, it's not clear that there are, you know, there's some overlap between Stay Free Alberta and the Centurion project, but it's not a full. overlap. Like, we can't fairly say that the separatists behind the petition were behind this data breach. There are different groups. This is a kind of a big mass collective by a bunch of conservative advocates and activists to separate. Some of them are trying to be like to say, we have nothing to do with this one. There's a criticizing. This has made us look bad in the public because people are all tearing us with the same brush. So there is some of that old circular firing squad situation here. But then again, a lot of the separatians.

are saying this is overblown. This is a witch hunt and this is something by the deep state or the RSCMP or elections Alberta trying to undermine our cause and our efforts. Since we're on, things that could throw a wrench in their ultimate goal, which is a referendum, also we're talking about here too is that there is a court ruling that should be coming down any day now. A group of First Nations has challenged the ability of the province. to actually separate and just briefly walk me through this court case and the potential outcome of it. You're absolutely right. This court challenge could stop the whole referendum and separatist movement dead in its tracks. It might even, you know, stop multiple separatist movements than its tracks effectively because the argument from First Nations is that a province has no right to schedule a referendum to break away from Canada because.

Well, our treaties were signed with the Crown, a British Crown, and the responsibility was passed on to Canada to uphold that obligation. And that can be unilaterally passed across. The First Nations signed treaties, numbered treaties in the West. And some of those overlap with different provinces. Some of them have bits of Saskatchewan, BC, and Alberta and Northwest Territories in them. And if you sever Alberta from that treaty, you are breaking the treaty if you severed from Canada. So basically their argument is that you cannot separate, which would be a challenge to pass court precedent, passed the 30 some year, nearly 30 year old Supreme Court reference on separatism.

But so much has changed in the last 30 years in First Nations law that things may have progressed to the point where a judge can say you cannot separate potentially because it would break treaties unless you first. consult with First Nations. This could stop this citizens' initiative in its past and could stop potentially all efforts to succeed. I mean, Quebec, right? It can have implications for even Quebec. So, I mean, we're watching it really closely. And, you know, it should be coming. It should be coming any day.

If the judge does say that this question can't go to a referendum, is, when you say dead in its tracks, like, we really mean that? Or are there other avenues for the movement tried? to try to obtain their goals. So a lot's going to depend on what the ruling is and how it looks and what happens after that. Stay free, Alberta and the separatist groups that have had this reminds a petition are also saying, you know, even if the court stops us, our plan B is we're going to appeal directly to Daniel Smith, the premier, to authorize a referendum anyway because, you know, you can get a referendum

to separate by citizens initiative by this petition drive in Alberta, or the premier can just call it themselves. Of course, that's how they did in Quebec, that the premier was, you know, the premier in 80 and 95 was a party Quebec law separatist. They organized this themselves. So Daniel Smith could do that. I mean, there are already some referendum questions on immigration and constitutional reform that Daniel Smith has scheduled on October 19th of this year. And the separatist referendum could just be added to that. But here's the thing. If a judge says you can't separate or hold this referendum, you know, because it violates that, the First Nations could come and challenge the exact same way, a Daniel Smith initiated referendum and have the same outcome.

So this ruling could only quash the separatist plan A, but also their plan B. Yeah. Is this something, though, that a Premier could use the notwithstanding clause are? That's a really good question. And the answer is no, because the duty to consult, First Nations in the Constitution is not subject to the Augustinney Clause. If the ruling decides that that's not, you know, let's this pass, we're almost certain to get a referendum on October 19th for Alberta to separate from Canada. And that is huge. Speaking of Daniel Smith, she has publicly advocated for United Canada, but also, as you have just mentioned, much of the base of her party is pro separation. and she opened the door to this separation vote with legislation

that would allow referendums on topics that get the requisite signatures. You and I have talked on the show many times about how she's kind of walking this incredibly fine line and even flirting with the separatists along the way. And just have these latest developments, this whole data breach saga, turned up the pressure on her to take a harder line with the separatists that, you know, a lot of people have been calling on her to do for a while.

I think it does. I mean, this certainly turns up the anger and a lot of the public on the separatist movement that some of them were involved in this alleged data breach. It, you know, will, as things get closer and closer to a referendum, the question is going to be asked more and more. Can Daniel Smith stay neutral? This sovereignty within a Canada thing is sort of this middle road. But a question, do you want to leave Canada, is probably the most black and white thing you can possibly ask, an electorate. So it, you know, for some people, this is already an untenable position. Does it become, sorry for the word, untenabler, as things go forward.

And certainly this, the data breach more so than them getting all the signatures and submitting them to elections Alberta has really, ratcheted up the attention and the pressure on this separatist project. So, yeah, the heat is certainly ratchet up on her. Yeah. I mean, it does feel like these guys have been in the news for, well, a whole host of reasons recently, including research from a bunch of disinfo groups that says the U.S. and Russia are amplifying separatist messages. CBC just did an investigation that found a bunch of accounts were amplifying separatists. separative stuff and they traced them back to like a bunch of Dutch accounts and these hired actors. There are a lot of forces at play here. Jason Kenney was speaking at an event this week

and saying that the pro-Canada side in the province needs to get their act together. He said they've been slow to get organized and he said he thought this was partly wishful thinking that this would just go away. And as we've just talked about it, it could go away, but it also might not go away. And I wonder what you think of the former premier statements. Does he, does he have a point? I think there, it's ironic because he was a bit of an advocate for Brexit, but a lot of, at the time, a lot of people are worried that we're, that Alberta could sleepwalk into another Brexit, where nobody took it the movement seriously, thought it was a bunch of, you know, outsiders and cranks who were pushing this idea that Albert, that Britain leave the EU. And lo and behold, June. 23rd, 2016, it passes. And so people are wondering if this is the same sort of situation here. So Jason Kenney has been pretty outspoken about this.

He's been participating in debates with separatists. He's speaking for a big business group next week. But a lot of other people in Alberta are kind of just hoping this passes by. Business leaders, especially in the energy industry, don't want to really rub Daniel Smith the wrong way. of course she's, you know, she holds a lot of their, you know, is advocating for their cause pretty consistently. So they don't want to cross her. And are, you know, this report on foreign interference raised the question.

Are election authorities and provincial law enforcement authorities and security apparatus? Are they ready for what's to come? Because if we're already seeing Pravda, Canada and fake websites and MAGA influencers all trying to, And this sloppaganda that our colleagues at Radio Canada and CBC uncovered from Holland, are we ready for this torrent of what's to come once a referendum, or if a referendum actually goes ahead and goes to an October 19th ballot? Yeah, all very important questions. Jason, this is great.

Thank you so much. Always happy to chat with you about this stuff. All right, so before we go today, after I spoke with Jason, elections Alberta told CBC News that more than 500 people who accessed the database with millions of Alberta voters' personal information have been issued cease and desist letters. 23 of those letters were sent to people that the Centurion Project says received the voting list from them. Front burner was produced this week by Matthew Amha, Joytha Shen Gupta, Kevin Sexton, Mackenzie Cameron, Mia Johnson, Dave Modi, and Cecilia Armstrong. Our YouTube producer is John Lee. Our music is by Joseph Shabbasim.

Our senior producers are Imogen Burchard and Elaine Chow. Our executive producer is Nick McKay Blokos, and I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.